{"id":660258,"date":"2010-02-10T00:01:26","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T05:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100208\/0343328079.shtml"},"modified":"2010-02-10T00:01:26","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T05:01:26","slug":"judge-rejects-digiprotects-demands-for-made-up-legal-fees-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/660258","title":{"rendered":"Judge Rejects DigiProtect&#8217;s Demands For Made Up Legal Fees In Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back at the end of last year, we wrote about how some had noticed that DigiProtect, one of a group of companies that purposely <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20090831\/0250256053.shtml\">puts files online<\/a> to see who downloads them, and then threatens them with &#8220;pay up or we&#8217;ll sue&#8221; letters, was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20091204\/0924437205.shtml\">potentially in trouble<\/a> in Germany for not following the law.  German law says that you can&#8217;t base &#8220;legal costs&#8221; on a contingency like winning.  Yet, DigiProtect&#8217;s agreement is that it only gets paid if it can collect on the pre-settlement letters.  That goes against the law.  And, now, a court has agreed, and found that <a href=\"http:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/anti-piracy-outfit-wont-reveal-costs-file-sharer-let-off-the-hook-100207\/\" >DigiProtect can&#8217;t ask for legal fees in Germany<\/a> unless it can actually prove what those real fees are.  The court did offer DigiProtect an out: open your books and show what the real costs are, and how they are paid.  DigiProtect refused to do so.  This basically cuts out pretty much all of the massive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20091012\/0310056486.shtml\">profits<\/a> DigiProtect and others brag about.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100208\/0343328079.shtml\">Permalink<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/articles\/20100208\/0343328079.shtml#comments\">Comments<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/techdirt.com\/article.php?sid=20100208\/0343328079&#038;op=sharethis\">Email This Story<\/a><br \/>\n <br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=be966127c7025192f1ee7a80e4ccaf99&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=be966127c7025192f1ee7a80e4ccaf99&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?resize=0%2C0\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=9ltg08JZTc8:STKfSsJB5fI:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?i=9ltg08JZTc8:STKfSsJB5fI:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.techdirt.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?a=9ltg08JZTc8:STKfSsJB5fI:c-S6u7MTCTE\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/techdirt\/feed?d=c-S6u7MTCTE\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/techdirt\/feed\/~4\/9ltg08JZTc8\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back at the end of last year, we wrote about how some had noticed that DigiProtect, one of a group of companies that purposely puts files online to see who downloads them, and then threatens them with &#8220;pay up or we&#8217;ll sue&#8221; letters, was potentially in trouble in Germany for not following the law. German [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":288,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2LLk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/288"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}